Free credits and limits

You can use every Chab tool for free, with or without an account. Free does not mean unlimited: free credits are one-off, and free work has a few limits.

Where free credits come from

• Guest trial. Without an account you get about 50 one-off credits for 7 days, from the browser trial on the home page or when you connect your agent. The amount can vary by location.
• Signup bonus. When you create an account and verify your email address, you get bonus credits. If you started as a guest, the credits left on your trial move into the new account as well. The bonus is given once and expires 30 days after it is issued.

Free credits do not refresh. When they run out, starts return free_credits_exhausted. Then buy a credit pack or choose a plan. You can buy packs without a plan (pay as you go); a plan gives twice as many credits per pack. See Credits and Billing.

Limits on free use

Free credits work with all tools except research reports, contact search by domain and domain registration (WHOIS), with smaller limits than paid plans. Those three need a plan or bought credits, because one call can use more than all your free credits. The All tools guide lists them: input size, file size, research sources, screenshots, monthly and daily starts, and file storage.

A few tools also run in a smaller form on free credits:

• Free language model and translation requests use fixed model routes with output limits.

Paid credits keep their own, larger limits.

When free use pauses

Chab sets a daily limit on how much free work all users can run together. When that limit is reached, free credits pause for a while:

• New free starts return promotional_budget_exhausted (HTTP 503, retryable). Wait for Retry-After when it is present, then try again later or with a smaller request.
• A longer operation that makes several provider calls can stop part way and fail with the same code. Its unused credit hold is released.
• GET /v1/health reports free_mode.state: "degraded" while free starts are paused.

Paid credits are never affected by the free-use limit. File conversion runs on Chab's own servers, so it does not count toward the limit either.

Your own browser session, API key or MCP connection can have its own spending limits too. Other free-use errors, such as free_usage_paused and challenge_required, are explained in Free-mode operation errors.